Mentorship | City Arts Portsmouth

POSE 2025 Artist Mentoring Scheme

Are you an early-career artist over the age of 18? Would you like support and guidance to help you develop your work? If so, the City Arts Portsmouth Mentorship scheme could be for you.

As part of the Portsmouth Open Studios Event (POSE) 2025, we are offering a small number of local, early career artists access to dedicated one-on-one mentorship support for 4 months.

For each artist we will offer:

4 half-day sessions with your mentor, meeting once a month from October 2025 to January 2026
£250 funding for travel and materials
A networking event and guest speaker
Promotion of your work through the POSE network
A dedicated exhibition in Portsmouth for mentees and mentors in February 2026, as part of the POSE event 2025/26 schedule.

Key Benefits of Mentoring:

Professional Development:
Guidance on career planning, networking, and building a sustainable artistic practice.

Technical Skills:
Feedback and advice on artistic techniques, style development, and portfolio building.

Confidence and Motivation:
Support and encouragement to overcome challenges and pursue creative goals.

How to apply:

Please fill out this Google Form.

Closing date for applications:

23:59 on 27 October 2025

What happens after that? We will contact you to let you know further steps by 01 November 2025

The mentorship scheme is a lottery grant funded by the Arts Council.

Who are the mentors?

TBA

Artist Mentoring Scheme 2025

The POSE Artists Mentoring Scheme aims to provide a supportive environment that helps build an independent creative practice, offering guidance and expertise from an experienced mentor.

Who is it for? What is it?

This year, we have secured Arts Council England funding to develop a pilot artist mentoring scheme, offering two days of support and guidance to our young and early career professional artists.

We now have the opportunity for the Young Artists of Portsmouth artists to work one-to-one with a professional artist/mentor to help develop their creative practice.

We define "early career professional artists" as artists within the first two years of their career, looking to elevate their art. This is primarily aimed at those who have not shown their work professionally (outside of an educational setting) before.

One of our aims at City Arts Portsmouth CIC is to help develop local artists in their creative journey through positive professional mentoring and start to help navigate their way through

Key Benefits of Mentoring, which we can focus on are: